Moving on
by planet p
Summary: After the Center is shut down, everyone's lives, it seems, are moving on in different ways. Whilst still finding ways to stay in touch, they try not to let themselves be dragged back into the past. Jarod/Zoe


**Moving on** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

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_2007_

After the Center had been shut down, it hadn't been easy for Jarod to start a new life doing what he'd always dreamed of doing. Staying in one place for too long a period of time reminded him of all of the years he'd spent locked up inside the Center, no matter how hard he tried to feel differently, no matter how often he told himself that chapter of his life was over. He'd been handed the opportunity to start over, but nobody had ever said that it would be as hard as he was finding it.

Even then, he'd thought that maybe he and Miss Parker might be able to make a go of some sort of romantic relationship, until he'd realized that faced with the possibility of one, he hadn't really felt that way about her at all, and he'd ended up coming back to Zoe.

Miss Parker hadn't said anything; she'd come to their wedding, she'd even been one of Zoe's bridesmaids, along with Debbie, Emily and Margaret. Still, Jarod couldn't escape the feeling he'd let Miss Parker down somehow by turning her down, couldn't escape the feeling that she'd been holding onto her feelings from the past so strongly because in that way, they would give some reality, some validation to her past, and lend some meaning to her future. He felt bad that he couldn't help her with that, to learn to move on and still be able to see brightness in whatever future lay ahead for her.

Today, Zoe and he had two beautiful daughter, Caprice, who was the eldest and five years old, and Amelia, who everyone just called Milly, and was two. Zoe's health was stable, and Jarod worked as a doctor. He liked to help people, and also it would keep him close to any new way that he might be able to help Zoe. He, himself, was learning to move on.

Vacationing in the mountains, Miss Parker had found someone, and it looked like they might eventually end up together, but sometimes she still rang Jarod to talk about things, or just talk about nothing really, just to say something, anything.

Sometimes, he got the feeling, she still felt the same way that he did: like even though he could say things now, people just weren't listening. Though he supposed it was something more along the lines of that he just wasn't letting them in.

He tried not to be like that with Zoe, he tried just to tell her things, things about his past, of just something he was thinking. He wanted them to work out, and now, with the kids, he wanted it even more. Sometimes, it hurt how much he wanted them to be okay, and so he was afraid they'd just wake up one morning… and nothing would be okay again.

Even though he supposed it was a silly fear. Things fell apart for people all the time, people fell apart from each other, but if they were invested in each other, if they wanted to get to know each other and realized that you never stopped learning new things about a person – or yourself – and they were still comfortable with that person at the end of the day, if they still felt the same way about that person, then he wanted to believe that it could be okay.

His parents had moved in together and talked a lot; they even invited Zoe and he and the kids for dinner at their place every Saturday. He was quite happy about that.

Something he was a little apprehensive about was Sydney, though. Apparently Michelle and he had changed a lot in the time they'd been apart from one another and the connection just hadn't been the same, just hadn't worked the second time around, so they both gone on to meet new people.

He wasn't sure if it was because, in the end, Sydney hadn't got to have his own happy ending, hadn't got to have the family he should have been allowed to have in the first place, but Jarod always just worried a little about him, though he knew Sydney was as good a judge of character as any of them. He knew, also, that even a good judge of character could make mistakes and judge things wrongly. It worried him.

Sometimes, Miss Parker and he would just talk about all of the things about Sydney's new situation that worried them, and then they'd laugh about it afterwards. Of course, they both cared about Sydney a lot and that was never going to change.

Angelo had moved to the country and occasionally Jarod would receive letters from his carer, but it seemed like Angelo was happy enough away from all of the hubbub of the city that he didn't much savor the thought of making the trips to visit every so often. Which was fair enough, Jarod thought, the world didn't always get kinder, sometimes, it got a little bit meaner, and little bit more meagre; especially for a person like Angelo, he thought.

Whilst Jarod found it helpful to still believe in people, as if he could ever stop really, he knew all to well that there were many sides to humanity, and some of them were by no measure kind. And he could handle that. He had a feeling that it often pained Angelo, so he'd just decided to steer clear of it all, instead.

In addition to her beau, Miss Parker also lived with her 'little brother', Julius, who, in spite of his name, never went by Julius, preferring to go by Julian, instead.

Debbie was studying to be a doctor and Broots had found a job in the city which he said he actually found to be quite tolerable. Debbie, for her part, proclaimed to have fallen absolutely in love with the city. She would be terribly saddened, she'd once said, when she finally had to leave it, but she also wanted terribly to be a doctor.

Life was moving on for them all, and Jarod was glad that he was there to move on with it, and that he had Zoe and the kids to experience all of it with him. He honestly didn't think, not even for a second, that his life could have turned out much better even if he'd never been taken from his parents as a little boy. He was comfortable and happy with the way things were, and managing to cope with the changes that came and went.

In the end, they'd make it. That was his belief, anyway, and he was sticking by it.

"Your sister sells lingerie?" Miss Parker had asked on the phone one night. "I _need_ a sister!" When she said she'd write Raines a letter in jail (asking for a sister for Christmas), he had to smile, though he didn't for a second discount that she would do just that. For some reason, she'd told him, she just felt like writing him letters occasionally. Funnily, she'd never felt compelled to write her twin even one letter. It was a strange world, that was all she could say.

Though he didn't say so, Jarod supposed it was a little unfair. As a little girl, Miss Parker had known Raines from a very early age onwards, she'd never had the same expectations of him than she conceivably had formulated for her brother, she'd known what Raines was like from Day One, but it was different when you spent every day hoping that maybe, just maybe, one day only to have all of your hopes thrown back in your face. That really hurt.

He never suggested that she stop writing the letters, though. In her own way, he supposed, she was learning to put the past back in the past and move on. And who was he to stand in her way, in that case?

Oh, Miss Parker had told him, too, that Sam had moved to Alaska and, as funny as it sounded, she'd written him to tell him that, short of genetics advancing to the stage where she could take a pill and magically transform into a snow leopard, she would not be visiting him; he'd just have to drag himself away from majestic, frozen Alaska to come and visit her himself, ta, big guy.


End file.
